


The Simple Life (Ain't So Simple)

by CelestialArcadia



Category: Stardew Valley (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, POV Original Female Character, POV Player (Stardew Valley), POV Third Person Limited, Wedding, cottagecore fantasy vs reality(ish), technically a cameo from Lewis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:08:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelestialArcadia/pseuds/CelestialArcadia
Summary: In which Jane-the-office-worker becomes Jane-the-farmer, and deeply regrets it. Until she doesn't.
Relationships: Leah/Female Player (Stardew Valley)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	The Simple Life (Ain't So Simple)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my contribution to [From Grandpa's Farm](https://lbzines.tumblr.com/post/632722660865064960/from-grandpas-farm-by-lbproductions), a free Stardew Valley OC zine! I adore the game and it was super fun to write this. Please check out the rest of the zine, too! There's a lot of wonderful art and fic.

It was the type of coincidence that could only happen in a story. Jane, a down-on-her-luck worker at a soul-crushing office job in a big city, spent the time she wasn’t slaving away for a giant corporation fantasizing about a simpler life. She’d live on a small farm, with her wife (whom she was very optimistic did, in fact, exist; they just hadn’t met yet), raising crops and animals and making a quiet living, never having to wear business casual ever again.

And then she read Grandpa’s letter, and it was like everything fell into place instantly. She didn’t stuff a suitcase full of nothing but flannels and zoom to the property immediately, but she came pretty close. She went through all of her possessions and sold most of them—finally, she was able to bring herself to admit that no, she would never get around to re-reading all those books she rated 3.5 stars on her half-forgotten book blog. She didn’t get rid of the family photos or heirlooms, of course, or the dog-eared paperbacks falling apart after being read and re-read (and nearly dropped in the bathtub) so many times. If nothing else, even if the farm life fell through, the experience would have made her better at identifying what she did and did not value in her life, and that in itself would be a net positive, she thought.

* * *

Jane was...alright, she was a _little_ deterred by the state of the old farm. She didn’t expect it to be in perfect condition, but she also didn’t expect for there to be so many trees. And rocks. And stumps. And overgrown grass.

She knew that she wouldn’t come anywhere near to clearing everything out in a single day, so she focused on clearing out just a small plot in front of the house; she wanted to start the actual farming part of being a farmer.

It took a little bit to get used to her new scythe; it was heavier than she had expected, but soon she had a plot of dirt ready to be tilled.

This, though, ended up taking considerably more energy than clearing out the grass.

“I’m not a quitter...” she said to herself as she hoed soil in front of the cabin, pointedly refusing to acknowledge her failed attempt to learn how to play the saxophone. “Not a quitter...not a quitter...not a quitter...not...quit...”

Jane fell face-first into the dirt and screamed. The rest of the day seemed to pass by in a blur.

* * *

“This was a mistake,” Jane groaned. “I _am_ a quitter.”

_I’m not a farmer. I can’t do this every single day for the rest of my life._

Jane lay on her bed. She was sweaty. She was tired. She was sore in muscles she didn’t even know she had.

“I’m going back. Calling Mom and making her take me back to the city. This isn’t going to work out.”

She looked at the time on the clock next to the bed. 10:20 PM. Mom would be asleep right now; she was a morning person who tended to go to bed early.

“...I’ll call her in the morning.”

* * *

Jane did not call her in the morning.

She’d fallen asleep almost as soon as she’d hit the bed, not even bothering to wash or change out of her clothes.

When she woke up, she was still sore, and she was still gross, but she was less tired. She walked the short distance to the cabin’s front door and opened it, leaning against the frame, surveying the previous day’s work.

As a whole, the property was still a mess, full of wayward grass and rocks and stumps. But there was a small clearing in front of the cabin, and in that clearing was the small patch of tilled soil where Jane had planted parsnips.

It...was something. Not a lot. But it was something.

So maybe farm life wasn’t as easy or beautiful it looked on all those aesthetic Tinselgram pages. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t fulfilling in its own way.

“I think this might just work out.”

Jane looked down at her dirt-soiled flannel and grimaced. “But first, a bath. Ugh.”

* * *

The farming itself didn’t get _easy_ , but it became less difficult when Jane didn’t have to plant a bunch in a single day, and could focus just on watering the crops and clearing debris away from the land. (She found herself dreaming one night about being able to afford sprinklers. _One day..._ she thought, realizing that she well and truly was becoming a capital-F Farmer if she was fantasizing about agricultural equipment.)

She introduced herself to the other Stardew Valley residents, of course; it’d be rude to plop herself down and hermit herself without at least saying hi. She was glad to see that she got along with most of them, more or less, though to greater and lesser extents. If she had thought to rank them, perhaps, she could, lining them up in a big imaginary grid by how much she liked them.

And at the very tippy-top of that list would be, in giant letters, “♥ Leah ♥”.

Now, while Jane’s cottagecore fantasies _had_ involved falling in love with a woman, marrying her, and living a beautiful life together on their quaintly developed farmland alongside some extremely fluffy sheep, she tried to temper her expectations. The actual farming part had turned out— _differently_ than she imagined, and so it stood to reason that romance would be different too. And she didn’t even know whether Leah even _liked_ her that much, beyond “oh, hey, you like girls too.”

“Just don’t be creepy,” Jane told herself as she knocked on Leah’s front door.

The door opened, and Jane tried not to look _too_ excited at the sight of Leah. Jane held out the gift. She had practiced what she would say, but had forgotten what she’d actually decided on, which led to her just blurting out, “I brought you some wood. From the beach. To carve. If you want.”

Leah smiled, and Jane just barely kept herself from melting onto the floor. She took the driftwood from her hands and looked it over. “This is pretty nice, actually. I think I can make something really good with it. You wanna watch?”

“Yes! I mean, uh, if you don’t mind. Yeah.”

Jane couldn’t spend the whole day at Leah’s cottage as she would have preferred, but she did get to spend about an hour there, watching Leah carve up the gift wood into...something. She didn’t actually know what it was yet. But she was certain it would be beautiful.

* * *

“I now pronounce you wife and...wife!”

Jane cried, and Leah cried, and they kissed, and they were so, so happy; Leah in a wedding dress that made Jane cry with how beautiful she looked in it, and Jane in a hand-tailored suit that she worried might be a bit disappointing in comparison, but Leah cried when she saw her too. The whole village was in attendance and clapping, and a couple of them seemed to be crying as well. Nothing like this could have happened if Jane had stayed in the city.

 _It’s all worth it,_ she thought. _All the hardships, everything, it was all worth it just for this moment._

_Thanks, Grandpa._

Jane shivered. There shouldn’t have been a chill outdoors in the summer...oh well. She shook her head and turned her focus back to what was important.

“I love you, Leah. I’m so happy to be your wife.”

Leah nodded tearfully and kissed Jane, and kissed her again, and again for good measure.


End file.
